Challenge 2: Day 216: The Raid #1 (2018)

One of my favorite martial arts film series of the last ten years has been an unknown Indonesian film called The Raid: Redemption and it’s follow up The Raid 2. It’s an intense martial arts/gangster series that stars Iko Uwais (Mile 22) as one of the main characters and hero of our series Rama. It is truly some of the best action/martial arts fight films that I have seen in a very long time and when I found out that Titan Comics was publishing a comic book for the series I was excited. So for today, I have The Raid #1 for you guys which was written by Oliver Masters (Extraordinary X-Men Annual #1) and illustrated by Budi Setiawan (Roadkill Zoo) and the story takes place during the events of The Raid 2 so It features some of your favorite characters. Our hero Rama is in prison as an undercover agent under the name Yuda because he is to follow and protect Uco, but Uco has been released and Rama still has time to serve. Meanwhile, a hot shot cop decides that he is going to raid the club of an ambitious and ruthless crime lord named Bejo. Unfortunately for him, the plan backfires and he ends up in jail where Rama now has to make the tough choice to let a cop fend for himself or protect his fellow brother in arms?

One of the things I loved about this comic that I was worried about was whether or not they were going to bring the same kind of intensity to the comic pages like they did in the films. They definitely brought the intensity with this first issue which introduces us to a character we have never seen in the films which was cool because it fills in the gap of that all important prison fight scene from the film or at least I think it is. The action was brutal, violent, and intense in the comic just like the films were and I absolutely loved it because that is what I was looking for. One of the cool things I think that they added to this comic was during the fight scenes they point out what part of the body has been broken. I thought that was a nice touch so that we know what kind of damage is being done. So, I think it’s safe to say that I was a huge fan of the artwork in this comic, but the one thing that I am wondering about is where is the comic going to go. Is this just about the beginning part of The Raid 2 or is it going to go a little deeper since we have Hammer Girl, Baseball Bat Man, etc. Check it out for yourselves because I know I will and check out my grades below: